Joyce's 3rd Letter to Douglas Henslowe

Miami Biltmore Hotel
1200 Anastasia Avenue ● Miami, Fla.

September 11, 1937

Mr. Douglas Henslow
℅ Winston Memorial Behavioral Research Program
Johns Hopkins University Hospital
601 N. Broadway
Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Doug,

I’m sitting here in my room, chainsmoking and trying to get this all down
straight. I wrote this letter out twice longhand before giving up and deciding
to type it. You probably couldn’t read my handwriting when I’m like this anyway.

By now they will have told you that we are back in the States. I can’t tell
you much about what happened in Europe. I finally got to make my transatlantic
flight, not that anyone will ever know about it, I guess. Lillian and Martin want
to head up to Hopkins and I guess I’ll come along too.

You might see Mr. De Gennaro as well. I should warn you, he had an
accident while we were overseas. We tried to save his arm but in the end it
needed to be amputated below the elbow. Another casualty of war, I guess.

I hope autumn has come up in Maryland. Down here it’s still sweltering.
The ice in my drink melts almost as soon as I put it in, but it’s too hot to drink
anything without ice. Almost as bad as Egypt. That wasn’t as muggy, at least.
Did you ever go to Egypt? I don’t remember much. Sand, and flies. I saw the
pyramids for about a half an hour. There was always something to do, or somebody
hunting us.

I wonder what it’s like up by you. September is a bit early for the trees to
turn back in Tennessee, where I grew up, but when they did it was my favorite
time of year. My father would take me hunting then. We’d ride over to Lookout
Mountain and camp near the old Reb fortifications for a couple of days. I didn’t
care if we found any game, I just liked the time alone with Pa, and looking out at
the valley, the river shining, the hills soft and yellow.

I apologize for not writing more. I don’t have to tell you that the work we
do does not lend itself to frequent correspondence, even if there weren’t things

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Miami Biltmore Hotel
1200 Anastasia Avenue ● Miami, Fla.

I don’t dare put in writing. And, if I’m being honest--and Doug, you’re about the
only person I can really be honest with--I just don’t like the kind of place
you’re in. So I punish you for that. Another way that I am a coward, I guess.

I know better, too, because I was in a place like yours once, back in ‘28. I
had just come back from Africa and had an accident. I crashed my plane in New
Jersey. For one reason or another they said I needed "observation" and so I got
sent to a big state hospital near Trenton. Weren’t no place like Joy Grove or
Hopkins, either. All bars and wire grills. I suppose you know me well enough to
guess at how I got along with the screws in a place like that.

Let me catch you up on the fight. It seems one of Ramon’s boys was still
working in Europe. Martin had it out with him and I assure you he won’t bother
anyone again. We’re going to be off again soon. Out of the States, that’s all I can
tell you right now, but we think we have a solid lead on...what you saw back in
‘24.

I’m worried about Martin. I always had doubts about how he would hold up.
But he was like us, Doug. He’d lost something irreplaceable. So I knew he would
fight if there was something worth fighting for. Now, though--I won’t say that’s
he’s fighting for the wrong things. Maybe in the wrong way? Is it that he’s become
more like me and that saddens me? Because you and I, Doug, we didn’t lose
anything by becoming soldiers. But it diminishes Martin. And I feel helpless,
because once again I failed to protect someone from my own horrors.

I don’t know, Doug. I guess none of us really do. Martin has love in his
heart, and maybe that will make him stronger in the end than you or me. It’s sure
that I haven’t had anything like that for myself since...since I was in the
hospital.

There was a girl, you see. I know that won’t shock you. We who have touched
the loathsome Outer Darkness, what do we care for conventions--the useless
mutterings of blindfolded Puritans.

There was a girl, and we were in love.

Even now, I think it was that, think it was more than just two people
plumbing the depths of their desperation. I still hold on to that, even if it is
just wishful thinking--or guilt.

She was like me, never taking shit from the screws and always in trouble.
Probably what made me notice her, you know. She showed me how to pick the locks
on our cell doors and we would sneak out at night. One of the matrons always

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Miami Biltmore Hotel
1200 Anastasia Avenue ● Miami, Fla.

had a flask hidden in her locker. We’d help ourselves and then find a place to
be together.

I’d talk to her about busting out, but she never wanted to go. Her family
were some kind of bigshot politicians on the outside, and she didn’t want to
expose them to scandal —"any more scandal" she’d say, breaking my heart.

I just wanted her to be happy.

It couldn’t last, of course--one night that tough old matron hid in the
locker room and saw us swipe her flask. She nabbed us in one of the supply
closets. They separated us, and the next thing I knew one of the doctors was
calling me a deviant. That was the word they used when they wanted to hurt you
all legal-like.

One of the docs was some eager young thing, a bright boy out of Harvard.
Had some fancy new experimental treatment he wanted to test on me. He’d have me
tied down and shoot me full of some drug that made me really sick to my stomach.
Then he’d have a bunch of female patients come in and strip in front of me. He’d
let the male guards in to watch the girls. I can still remember them hollering
and whistling behind me, while I tried to fight the drug. It never worked,
though, and eventually I’d be sick all over the place. I always tried to catch
Bright Boy’s shoes in the mess, even though that just made it worse.

After he’d send me with the guards to clean me up. Usually they’d strip me
and wash me down with a hose. The water was always so, so cold. Sometimes they’d
beat me with the hose--old Mob trick, if you do it right it don’t leave a mark.

And sometimes they’d just throw me in my cell without cleaning me up, the
stinking stuff all over me.

Ah, Doug, why am I telling you all this? Dr. Walker is an all right gee, he’d
never do anything like that, and if anyone else tried Lillian would kill them.
As would I. You don’t lack protectors.

You know, I never thought about it before, but Lillian reminds me a lot of
Elizabeth--the girl I knew in the hospital. She had that same dark hair, and
those eyes with a faraway quality. I swear at night I could see the stars
reflected in them. Liz loved poetry, she would quote lots of stuff to me. From
memory--we didn’t have books in that place. There was one of Byron’s she liked a
lot. I think of it sometimes, when I see Lillian.

Doug, I want to help Lillian but I don’t know how to anymore. She’s like us.
But also not like us. All her life she’s been in the Dark and is unafraid of it. I

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Miami Biltmore Hotel
1200 Anastasia Avenue ● Miami, Fla.

don’t know if that’s because she doesn’t know, really, how horrible it is, or if she
genuinely has nothing to fear from it. Neither answer gives me much
consolation.

Probably I envy her, for how easily she deals with it all. You and I, Doug,
we were ripped from the Light, and want it back, are taunted and tormented by the
brightness all around us, which only casts shadows on our hearts. And because of
that we fight on, hopeless, helpless as snails torn from their shells--blind soft
animals in the dark. Because that’s what they do to you--rip away your reason
and leave only a terrible certainty.

I don’t know that Lillian will ever pay the price we paid. Part of me prays
she never will, even as I am sick with jealousy thinking that. Once I tried to
protect her in the hope that I could save her from our awful choice. What vanity!
She was born a far fiercer, far purer creature than either of us.

But Doug, I’ve seen that bill come due. I’ve looked into the eyes of a friend
and seen only madness. Looked into them over the barrel of a gun, and pulled
the trigger. We can all be broken. By monsters or by men. I’ve seen both.

Oh, I tell myself that I never was, that neither the hospital nor east Africa
could hurt me. It’s a lie I like to tell myself. We all have those, don’t we, Doug?
Those lies that we’re still the same person we think we are, even when we don’t
recognize ourselves in the mirror?

I had to wait a long time in the hospital before I dared to try and break
out of my cell again. I don’t know how long. I stopped counting the days when I
realized it didn’t help. But slowly I put together the tools I needed to pick the
lock on my restraints and jimmy the door to my cell. I snuck out in the
corridors. They kept them dark at night, to save on the electrical bills. It was
late. After midnight, in the dark hours when dawn is still too far off but sleep
will never catch you.

Liz wasn’t in her old room. I had to search a long, long time, fumbling and
out of breath with fear. I thought maybe her family had taken her out of there. I
wish they had, now.

Because I finally did find her, down on the first floor, in a ward I’d never
been to before. It was full of cots in neat serried rows, and in each cot was a
girl. I had to walk all the way down two rows before I found her. Even in the
dark, I knew her back, the arc of her body.

I gathered her up in my arms and she embraced me back, but something was
wrong. She was as weak as a rag doll. When I let go her whole body went slack. I

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Miami Biltmore Hotel
1200 Anastasia Avenue ● Miami, Fla.

whispered her name, but she just looked at me. Not even stared, just looked at
me, like I was a piece of furniture.

Her eyes were empty. They’d taken a piece of her brain, and put her stars
out.

I won’t get into what happened to me after that. Was easy for the guards to
find me, in a roomful of people all wailing wordlessly, me the loudest. Anyway,
after that my friend Bayard came and took me back to Chattanooga. It wasn’t home
anymore, though. It was spring.

Sorry to burden you with all this. I’m out of cigarettes and my ice is all
melted. Outside the surf pounds the beach and fills my head with noise. I want
to scream and shout and run along the shore. But I’ll slug down this watery
drink, like I do every night, and try to sleep. And hope that tonight I won’t have
dreams.

If Dr. Walker lets me, I’ll try to take you out of the hospital for a bit.
Maybe we can go and have some crabcakes. I’ve heard there are a few good places
to hear music in Baltimore. And if we have time, maybe we can get up to
Washington. The Senators are in town all month, and we could catch a ballgame.
Faithfully yours,

Jos. A. Summers

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